I didn't do a post last month as not much progress was made in the vegetable garden and I was too busy to do much posting. I got really behind with my autumn garden because I was delayed by the horned melon experiment but I removed the vines and harvested whatever was growing there. Although they are supposed to turn yellow when ripe, mine didn't but that's maybe because of the colder, wet summer we had
And the 64-dollar question: what's it like? Cut open, this is the melon and it tastes a bit like cucumber but a little tart - you remove the jelly seeds with a spoon, the rind and pith isn't edible
The verdict: I'll grow this again, but against the back wall or somewhere like that. The high rainfall caused rampant growth and I had to cut it back constantly to stop the vines from smothering the rest of the plants. It's tough and pest resistant so well suited to my garden, there were some pumpkin fly stings but they didn't destroy the crop, as they do with pumpkins and marrows. The melons can be stored for weeks too, they don't rot easily once picked.
I'm not good at growing vegetable seedlings in trays, the extreme heat tends to either kill them in the trays and I don't get the timing right and lose them that way so I prefer to sow directly into the soil and now the melon vines are gone I sowed my winter crops: spinach and peas, which don't appreciate our summers
The mesh is to protect the sprouting spinach from the cats and the sticks protect the peas and will act as supports later.
The sweet potatoes in the foreground and taro potatoes in the background will be harvested next month.
Excessive amounts of rain made the kale stems grow ridiculously long so these will have to be taken out, they are falling over and the long distance between the roots and leaves make them water-stressed and vulnerable to aphid attack.
These new kale seedlings were a freebie because they had been munched by beetles in the nursery and were unsaleable. I was happy to have them, they are already recovering.
I wanted to draw attention to the improvement in the soil - after 3 years, an unproductive wasteland is now a thriving garden after the massive task of sieving all the soil to remove a ton of rocks, stones and builders rubble. I then added lots of compost made from the remains of the huge Ombú tree I removed from the back part of the house and that has turned sand into good growing soil. Now I have a range of fresh food all year round whereas nothing grew successfully before.
Now we wait to see what winter brings. Next week will be warm and my seeds should germinate. La Nina is projected to end around July and there will be a neutral phase, which could bring freezing temperatures again and that will then kill off the vegetables but we live in hope. The spinach is a baby variety so I should have had a harvest. We'll see...